Category: USA

Ernest Hemingway loved the place… the conch republic as they call it. Of course today we’re in Key West. And it’s only month post hurricane Irma. The local residents have done a heroic job of clean-up. There’s some evidence of damage, but the hurricane has clearly not dampened the laid-back ambiance that is so characteristic of Key West.

We took ourselves on a walking tour to the southernmost point in the US then down Duval Street for a bit of hat shopping.

Buying a new sun hat at “Hot Hats” on Duval Street with proprietor, Terry Lipsky.

The rain started in earnest, pounding down to the point of mini flooding. It’s not hard to imagine what it must have been like in a hurricane.

We’re truly enjoying the Silver Muse…she’s a beautiful ship and our suite is lovely. Tomorrow we’ll be at sea and on our way to Costa Rica.

Sometimes a travel experience involves a tried and true tourist attraction; other times you find those off-the-beaten path places that no one else seems to find. Either way, they can have their charms.

Last month we visited San Diego for the first time in over a quarter of a century. When people think of tourist attractions in San Diego, the first thing that usually comes to mind is their zoo, and so we made our way from our hotel on the edge of the Gaslight District to the San Diego Zoo only to find ourselves in a morass of people. Having visited the Taronga Zoo in Sydney Australia within the last couple of years, we found the San Diego experience to be lacking in appeal, so we had to find other attractions. Enter the USS Midway.

For many Americans, visiting this floating museum, an actual post-World War II aircraft carrier, likely evokes feelings of patriotism and awe of the US military machine. For us non-Americans, it was an experience of quite a different kind.

There is no doubt about it: there is something awe-inspiring about the sheer size of a vessel of this kind. The hangar deck, the flight deck, not to mention the miles and miles of corridors. We marveled at how a young sailor or air man could possibly have found his way around the carrier on first deployment.

The carrier itself was commissioned a week after the end of World War II and had the distinction of being the largest ship in the world until 1955. During her 47-year career in the US naval fleet, she participated in many important actions including the Vietnam war and Operation Desert Storm. Walking around the ship and exploring its labyrinth of corridors, you get a real sense of history. The curators of this “museum” have done a spectacular job of evoking the life and times of this massive ship.

We arrived early – about 15 minutes before it opened at 10 am – and found ourselves in an already forming line. Once the gates opened, however, we moved quickly and spent the next two hours exploring. It is not a place for anyone with mobility issues – and for the love of God leave the strollers at home! There are many steep stairways and the corridors move from one water-tight space to the next requiring you to step up and over the barriers where the doors shut. Leave the very little ones at home if you want to really experience this museum.

So, we found that massive tourist attraction – then marveled at the opposite end of the size spectrum at the San Diego Model Railroad Museum. Fascinated by all things miniature (we’ll tell you about the Arizona Art Museum’s offering next week), Patty had discovered that this museum occupied a floor of one of the buildings at Balboa Park.

It is the largest indoor model railroad exhibit in North America and its 27,000 square feet are pure pleasure. Just as we marveled at the sheer massiveness of the Midway, we were equally awestruck by the workmanship of the miniature worlds created by the model railroad artisans.

This is a place that you can take younger children who will be mesmerized by the miniature worlds and the trains making their way through various landscapes.

It was lovely and quiet there that day and we were delighted to have experienced it.

The Midway has to be seen to be believed, so if you have a moment, click through our video and then make plans to get there on your next trip to San Diego.

This is a story about reservations. It’s about what they are, why discerning travelers make them and why it’s a problem when a hotel, car rental agency or – in the case of this particular story – restaurant doesn’t seem to have the same understanding.

Before we begin, though, let’s have a bit of a primer on what a reservation means, and no one says it better than Jerry Seinfeld in the old scene “The Car Rental.”

Unless you’re fond of those spur-of-the-moment trips where you’re happy to just get in the car and go, every travel experience starts with a reservation of one sort or another. There are different kinds of reservations.

When we “reserve” an airplane ticket, we have about ten minutes to complete the transaction and pay. In these cases, we expect the reservation to be “held” because we have a fully paid ticket which we expect to form a contract for the airline to carry us where we plan to go. Well, it does – but not always in the way that we might have liked. Have you ever been “bumped” on an over-sold flight? The airline still has the obligation to get you to your destination, just not necessarily on that flight.

We make hotel reservations without paying up front. However, in most cases, they require a credit card to “guarantee” the reservation. This is their guarantee of payment, not your actual guarantee of a room. If you fail to show up, they will charge you the first night’s fee. If you arrive and they have no room for you, you have little recourse. We all hope this won’t ever happen, but it can.

Years ago we were flying to London for a European tour with our then ten-year-old son. It was an overnight flight arriving in London around 6:30 am. We had been through this before, arriving at a hotel and having to stow luggage for hours while we dragged our jet-lagged selves around until we could check in. This time we thought we were smart. We booked the hotel room for the night before so that we could have the room the minute we arrived – albeit late, but we had a reservation and knew we’d be paying for the room. It turned out that the hotel took our reservation, charged us for the night and promptly sold the room to someone else. When we arrived they had no room for us – not even the room we had paid for. Naturally we were not happy. So this brings us to our most recent “reservation” issue.

The Marriott Marquis on the San Diego waterfront. Roy’s is right along here.

Three weeks ago we found ourselves in downtown San Diego for a few nights. We’re great believers in Open Table for finding interesting dining spots, and love the ease of use and how happy we’ve been with the results. So we went on Open Table and booked a dinner reservation at Roy’s.

One of the few fine dining spots on the San Diego waterfront, Roy’s is also “conveniently located at the Marriott Hotel”[1]. Since Art is a lifetime Gold Marriott and we carry a Marriott credit card when we travel in the US (no extra exchange fee and extra Marriott points are among the features), we were delighted to make this reservation and looked forward to it. We were set for 6:45 pm.

We arrived at Roy’s at 6 pm so that we could enjoy a pre-dinner drink at their lovely bar. We checked in with the hostess who said she’d be along to get us in due course. We enjoyed a gin and tonic in the bar watching people come and go to the dining room. By 6:50 pm we had not been summoned so we paid our bar bill and went back to the hostess stand where we received some surprising information.

“Oh,” she said, “there is no table available.”

“Excuse us? We have a 6:45 reservation,” about which we informed the hostess on our arrival 50 minutes earlier at 6 pm, at which point a manager presented himself. No table at present; no table in the foreseeable future (foreseeable in our view being the next five minutes).

We indicated to him that we make reservations so that there can, indeed, be a table available at the appointed time. He had the audacity to stand directly in front of us, beaming from ear to ear in the smarmiest of ways and said, “We have lingerers tonight.”

Well, need we say it again? But we did inform him again of the purpose of a reservation. We might have even mentioned the Seinfeld scene. He stood there smiling. No table.

It is true that restaurants cannot always be assured that the tables will empty at the time they expect them to, but they also have an obligation to the patrons who make reservations. This is a management issue.

The thing that was most infuriating about this whole scenario was not the unfulfilled reservation, rather it was the attitude and arrogant nature of the manager who stood in front of us grinning like a Cheshire cat. Good customer service practice would suggest first apologizing, indicating when a table might be available and offering us a free drink, or the like, while we wait. None of these things happened.

Roy’s advertises itself as being “at the Marriott Hotel” and the Marriott Marquis Hotel web site lists Roy’s under their “dining at this hotel” which, regardless of whether the Roy’s employees are Marriott employees or not, clearly associates the brand with Marriott. Based on our many years of Marriott stays, the customer service mentality displayed that evening did not do Marriott proud. They should be ashamed of their association.

So, what did we do?

We said good evening and turned on our heel to seek another place to eat. We were rewarded by finding Sally’s just a short way down the boardwalk. Sally’s had a table and treated us wonderfully.

To add insult to injury, the staff at Roy’s indicated to Open Table that we were no-shows for our reservation, a situation that we never would allow to happen. Thankfully, Art was able to straighten things out with Open Table, but it seemed like a bit of a slap from Roy’s. We had indeed, shown up for our reservation. Roy’s, as Jerry would have said, knows how to take a reservation, they just don’t know how to keep a reservation – which, as we know, is the whole point of a reservation. Shame on them.

Walt Disney once said, “The real trouble with the world [is that] too many people grow up.” And what better place to reconnect with your inner child than Los Angeles: City of Angels, Tinseltown, Lotusland, and our personal and very timely favourite: La La Land. For La La Land it truly is, and we spent four days reaching back to revive our inner children who suspended any disbelief and just embraced the fun.

Four days in Los Angeles, you say? What could you do a mere in four days? As it turns out, quite a bit! And it all began at Universal Studios.

An actual working film studio and theme park combined, Universal Studios Hollywood is the quintessential La La Land location and one of the more interesting of the theme parks we’ve encountered. Armed with a native Angeleno who is actually “in the business” as they say (our son-in-law) we were whisked off to this fantasy land knowing that we were guaranteed to see the best of it. We were right.

The first step in day at Universal Studios is to pick a week day, get there early and make a bee-line to the backlot tour – everything else can wait. We boarded the tram at 10 am sharp and were on the first tour out. It lasted about 45 minutes and was worth the price of admission.

The tour took us past working studios where current television and motion picture productions are currently underway. It also took us through various traditional back-lot fixtures that included the Dr. Seuss Whoville village that was used to film How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Wisteria Lane of Desperate Housewives fame (yes, the lane and all of the house exteriors were fake), the shattered neighbourhood of War of the Worlds fame, a Mexican town replete with a flood which we experienced, a subway tunnel where we found ourselves in the midst of a fire, a flood and a cave-in, Amity Island from Jaws, the Bates Motel from Psycho, little Europe and a fill-in for New York City used in many movies and TV shows, all fake to the core, and we loved every minute of it. We even found ourselves in a high-speed chase in the middle of Fast & Furious. Then it was time for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

One of the newest attractions, the Harry Potter part of Universal Hollywood opened in early 2016 and consists of a replica of Hogsmeade’s streets and an enormous replica of Hogwart’s. Why do we know so much about Harry Potter, you ask? Well, years ago when our son Ian was about ten years old and a fan of wizards, Patty stumbled upon a book called Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone at a local children’s bookstore. The clerk told her that it was new and unknown as children’s books go, but he might enjoy it. He then grew up with each subsequent installment of the franchise. Well, the rest, as they say is history and we know all about Harry Potter. So what did our inner children do?

We stood in a line that wended its way through Hogwort’s dark corridors while the portraits talked to each other and we received instruction from Dumbledore. Then we embarked on an animatronic and screen-based thrill ride (as it is described in various places) called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey. And it was certainly a thrill ride. When we got off we were happy that we had decided to get on before and not directly after lunch. If you take the ride, do leave all your belongings (purses, cameras etc.) in the provided lockers. You won’t want to drop anything off this one. Then it was, indeed, time for lunch.

We found ourselves in The Three Broom Sticks, a pub-like restaurant housed in what seemed to resemble the dining hall at Hogwort’s. The fish and chips and cold beer were welcome. But there was more to see.

We enjoyed the show featuring a variety of animals who have appeared in a plethora of films. We tend to think of on-screen animals in terms of dogs and sometimes cats, but we were also treated to birds, hedgehogs, and chickens to name a few. Who knew these animals could be trained? We do now.

We also took in the behind-the-scenes special effects show which provided a fascinating presentation on how some of those movie special effects are created. We’ll never look at a movie in quite the same way again. But the movie industry is not the only way we embraced our inner children.

The Magic Castle, Hollywood, California

The following evening, we were treated to a much less well known but just as fascinating experience. An adults-only private club, the Magic Castle is a Hollywood fixture. According to its web site, it “promotes the art of magic, encourages fellowship and maintains the highest ethical standards. We provide a friendly, inspiring environment where members and their guests can enjoy the art and each other’s company. Our goals are to advance the art and promote a positive image of magic and magicians worldwide…”[1] and word has it that the best trick is actually getting through the door. We were able to gain access only after our daughter and son-in-law booked a room at the Magic Castle Hotel next door, we followed their strict dress code [worth reading about http://www.magiccastle.com/visiting/ ) and promised to leave all cameras and phones in our pockets.

At the Castle, which is housed in a century-old mansion, we ate dinner in their dining room, were amazed by face-to-face card tricks in the bar, serenaded by a piano played by a ghost (she could take almost all requests), and attended a truly professional show featuring prestidigitation. Another opportunity to let our inner children play during a very adult evening. No one under 21 permitted at all.

It’s good to know that travel can help us find our inner children, and that making discerning travel choices can elevate them that much higher! More about our recent trips coming up…